


Iron, Feathers, and Stardust

by Selkie_de_Suzie



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Healing, losing loved ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 08:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5702260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selkie_de_Suzie/pseuds/Selkie_de_Suzie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ll leave my love between the stars…”</p>
<p>Even a King must say farewell. In honor of David Bowie’s passing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Iron, Feathers, and Stardust

The stars still shine Underground, but it’s on a different glimmer that the Queen’s eyes are fixed. “You can’t know for sure that this is it.”

He laughs, soft and scratchy, and she remembers a time when it was a silky purr, arrogant and seductive and pleasure given form as it brushed over her skin. “Few things are immortal, precious thing. Songs and stories, yes…” 

His strange eyes gleam up at her, their sparkle still coming from the fine line between ancient knowing and wicked indulgence that he has always managed to dance on, that one quality that has made her both weak-kneed and long to tear her hair out in frustration  _so_  many times,  _after all this time he can do this to her, even as he is –_

“Love, too, if one is so lucky,” he murmurs, and her retort melts in her mouth at the tenderness of that admission. “But Kings aren’t one of them, even Goblin ones. The Fae aren’t endless. You know that. You  _knew_  that.”

Her eyes burn with the same luster they had all those years ago, the green of them vivid and the still fine line of her jaw clenched. “I did and I do. That doesn’t mean I accepted it. It’s not –“

“Fair?”

She can make no reply, and his laugh isn’t mocking at all, only warm and tired. “Oh, my Queen…it never was. It never will be.”

_“I love you,_ ” she grits out, and his heart clenches at that and at how she still wears anger so becomingly, cheeks flushing, eyes bright and bold. He drinks her in, loses himself in her, she who solved his Labyrinth and saved her brother, she who conquered his lonely, arrogant heart.

She who managed not one world, but two, and won acclaim in both, a respected spinner of tales in the mortal realm and a beloved and feared Queen in his…

She continues on, her face taut with emotion, her voice an impassioned, choking murmur. “I  _love_  you, so I  _won’t_  lose you. My will is strong as yours, and my kingdom – “

His voice is gentle. “Kingdoms and wills have no say in this, precious.”

_“I don’t care.”_  She ducks her head, and the Queen is once again a scared and lost young girl, desperate for answers.  _“I lost Mom. I’ve lost so many now. I can’t lose you. I love you, Jareth, and I won’t lose you.”_

He lets his fingers stroke the silk of her hair as it flows over her shoulder. He remembers when it was a brown so rich and velvety and dark he believed that the cool slide of it over his skin was the closest one could get to capturing the feel of the night sky. Now the silver of it gleams like the spill of moonlight, and he is once again full of pained awe, silent worship, a King ready to kneel…

She has always been a magic beyond his ken, a force he could never tame, defiant and daring, beautiful and bold, wrathful in her anger and warm in her love.  _No King has ever been so lucky…_

“My Sarah…” he says, so soft, and her fingers catch at his, both of their skins worn and warm. He left wearing gloves long ago when he realized that he was depriving himself of the feel of her in the name of  _fashion_. Mismatched eyes gaze into wetly luminous green, and his smile is still sharp with knowing even as it’s fathomless with love. “You can defy the stars as much as you can move them. You’ve bested me in a way I could have scarcely dreamed of, vanquished loneliness and tore down arrogance.” His fingers stroke over hers. “ _This_ …this is no fight, precious thing. It simply comes to us all.”

Her eyes close, and her tears trail down her cheeks, precious and full as pearls and glittering like diamonds. But a faint smile curls at her lips.  _“Tore down arrogance?_  I’m not  _that_  good of a champion, your majesty.”

His laugh is rather thready now, and he notes with a soft absentmindedness that the shine of her hair is getting dim. “You would have it no other way, love.” He likes to think that is true. Or, at the very least, that he wore his pride a bit more becomingly as the twilight of his years came to him…

She chuckles, a watery sound, and looks up and away from where he lies on their bed to survey the lay of their land. Her face is now collected, though her eyes are still full of something that makes his tired,  _terribly_  tired body pulse with sweet pain.  _Precious_ …

_“God, I’ll miss you,”_  she whispers, face still turned to their Kingdom. “I’ll miss you  _so_  damn much. That’s…that’s what I can’t face. Knowing that you’ll be gone. I don’t want to face that. I don’t…I can’t…”

_I can’t live without you._

_“I can’t live within you…”_

He closes his eyes. Gods,  _let him be wrong_ , as wrong as he’s been about so many things. To live within her would be a heaven he still isn’t sure he merits…

What can be said? What can he possibly say to comfort her, soothe both of their hearts, Mortal and Fae and both aching at the soft, implacable approach of darkness?

He opens his eyes to join her in looking over their Kingdom, their home. His gaze flicks up to the heavens here, and the moon glows, soft and silver –

_“I’ll place the moon within your heart…”_

_Oh, precious thing, our first dance…_

– and the stars glimmer like frost and diamonds, strewn across violet velvet darkness. Dusk is coming soon.  _Dusk is coming to us all_ …

He considers them, tilting his head like an owl, and then –

Then he suddenly knows what to say, what tale to tell, what story to weave, what song to croon…

“Stardust has iron in it,” he says, and he can only manage a murmur now. She looks back at him sharply, her brows furrowing, and he arches a brow at her as arrogantly as he can. “Isn’t that what you mortals say?”

She blinks, and slowly nods. “They do. And the stories say that iron is poisonous to the Fae.”

“And well they should. A few shavings of the stuff over ones dinner is most unpleasant.” He rearranges himself upon the bed, making a veritable nest of pillows and blankets and sheets, and chuckles. “I never did tell you about that particular assassination attempt.”

She smiles briefly, but her eyes are still curious. He takes as deep a breath as he can, and continues on. “Wouldn’t it make a fine tale, a fitting end, for the Fae that pass on to be welcomed by the stars? No longer need  _they_  fear iron, they no longer possess hides for it to scald, no blood for it to poison.”

Her eyes are wide, and he covers her hands with his own once more, his own eyes intent. “And the Fae, be they kings or peasants, get to glimmer and shine and glitter up in the sky ever after, vainglorious things that they are…”

His smile is soft, his voice raspy. “I think that’s a  _very_  lovely tale, don’t you, Sarah?”

_“Is it real?”_  Her voice is soft and shaky, her words not the plea of a romantic, imaginative young girl, but of a lover desperate for reassurance, a wife needing comfort from her husband, a Queen set to rule a Kingdom without her King.

“If you wish it to be.”

_One last wish. For you, Sarah. I can do that for you._

She looks at him and knows what he is offering her, her eyes wide. And for one wild moment, her face, so worn with care and love and life, is once again a young girl’s.

But then she smiles and leans down, stroking hands through feathery hair, still gleaming white-gold even after all this time.  _“You move the stars for no one,”_  she murmurs against his lips, before kissing him, so soft, so sweet…

He could weep over the feel of her, over the swell of pride in his frail chest.  _You wear wisdom well, my Queen._

“I won’t,” he affirms when they must part. “But I…I can make them burn bright. Look…” He stops. It’s getting hard to finish, but he must. “Look…to the stars, Sarah. That…is where…you will find me, again and again. You’ll…never lose me, precious thing. I’ll burn…bright for you, I…swear it…”

Her voice is thick, and how foolish he is to speak of stars when nothing could compare to the shine of her eyes.  _“Jareth…”_

His words are gone now, his eyes dim, and he lets himself drown in sweet green as darkness steals over him. He feels a soft, warm rain upon his hands, and, perhaps…

_One last song…_

Her voice is a shaky murmur to his soft, dwindling rasp, but never was a duet so full of love.

“ _I’ll leave my love between the stars…”_

* * *

“World renowned fantasy writer Sarah Williams has once again retreated from the public. Though there are speculations of another novel coming out, those close to her say that she’s been in a deep depression, almost as if she were mourning something, or someone. Though she has never married –“

She switches off the radio with a snap and goes back to slicing fruit, her knife gleaming and her lips tight.  _Shows how much you know._

She finishes the last apple and arranges the slices upon a plate, reaching for her tea, the ceramic a warm and welcome weight in her hand. She retreats to her writing desk, the only place that feels  _safe_  nowadays. Walking in the park makes her think of getting lost someplace else, and then there had been that time when she was doing some window shopping and happened to spy an elegant pair of black leather gloves displayed.  _Oh, Jareth will like those, he’s the worst person to shop for–_

_Jareth is gone._

She had clutched at a lamppost and was forced to shake off many a concerned bystander. Thankfully, being an older woman  _does_  indeed have benefits - everyone swallows a line about inexplicable dizziness quite easily.

_Jareth is gone._

She had to throw out anything remotely peach flavored in the house, including that new sorbet Toby thought she would like the last time he had visited.

_Jareth is gone._

She hasn’t been back to the Kingdom in the longest time. Ludo will pine, Hoggle will furrow his craggy brow in concern, and –

_Jareth is gone and never coming back and sweet fucking Christ, what was the point of being Fae if you don’t get freaking immortality!?_

Her hands quake and tea spills over her desk, missing her keyboard but staining her journals and Sarah throws them away from her, kicks over her chair for good measure. Messy and wet and spilling everywhere, ink and tea and grief, words words words,  _ruined,_  all of them ruined and  _good riddance_ because they speak of a land that has won her acclaim, a land that she fell in love with, a land that she rules with –

_With a King by her side._

Her husband.

Jareth.

She’s supposed to rule with Jareth. She’s supposed to  _have_  Jareth _._

_Sweetheart, how can I do this without you?_

She buries her face in her hands, her fingers wet with tea and now with tears. Her readers love her take on Mayfly December romances, something timeless and powerful brought to its knees by someone brief and mortal –

The tragedy is supposed to come from the mortal slipping away from the immortal being, his heart full of ancient agony. 

That’s what she had prepared for.

_Yeah, well…stories lie._

And now she can’t write. She can’t even  _read_ over her drafts, it brings her back to too many evenings of being entangled in blankets and him, letting him read over her shoulder -

_He loved to hear how I would write him, loved the speeches I gave him, he’d quote them at the goblins all the time –_

Sarah sits in the midst of tea and pages and misery and sobs.  _Oh God, Jareth, it isn’t fair._

And then there’s a tap at the window, and then a noise like wings hitting glass –

Sarah stands so quickly she would be disorientated if she could give a damn and races to the window, throwing it open and looking wildly around for that tell tale flash of creamy white and tawny brown.  _“Jareth –?”_

She bites down on her tongue so hard that blood is nearly drawn.  ** _No._**   _Stop that. It was probably some decidedly un-magical bird hitting the glass. Stop torturing yourself._

She looks down with that in mind, all too ready to scoop up some stunned little sparrow from the rosebushes, and –

And there’s a feather. One lone feather, long and curved and beautiful and tawny-gold, balancing perfectly upon her sill.  _Owl. Barn Owl._  

_“The prettiest of the owls”,_  her seven-year-old self had declared and he had  _known_  that, she was sure he had known that and that was why –

Sarah stares at it, her eyes huge and her heart in her throat.

It  _waits_  for her, she can  _feel_  it, pressing down on her. Sarah doesn’t know if she’s strong enough, she’s an old woman after all –

_“You couldn’t be old if you tried, pet. And fifty is **woefully**  inadequate compared to what I have, so you’ll simply have to stop grousing and concede the victory to me –“_

Sarah closes her eyes, a betraying wetness seeping out from her lashes, and then her fingers decide to reach out, delicately grasping the feather by its slender quill.  _Primary remiges_ , she hears him whisper.  _Know every bit of me no matter what form I take, my Queen_.

She brings it closer, studying its familiar beauty, and…

Her eyes, still sharp as ever, squint to pick up what appears to be etched onto the quill. 

And then they widen and her inhale is sharp and deep and painful, but it seems her Goblin King had one more trick up his sleeve, one more wish to give her, one more dream to offer.

The words are white and clean, curling across the feather’s quill as clear as anything.

**_“I’ll leave my love…”_ **

And Sarah cannot stop herself from looking up, dimly noting that it’s  _much_ darker than she realized, she’s been losing track of how a day goes by what with how her grief has been swallowing her, and right above her…

A star shines. Bright and beautiful and –  _dare she say it_  – triumphantly vainglorious.   

Sarah stares at it, and then slowly clasps the feather to her. _“Between the stars…”_  she whisper-sings.

And tears spill from her eyes, but now they’re caught by the curve of her smile, wide and wet and beautiful and precious.

**_For my will is strong as yours, and my love as great…_ **

**Author's Note:**

> RIP, Goblin King of my youth and all around legend of a human being. May the stars shine brighter in your company…


End file.
